Champlain, Branbury, the Lakes at Night
by Lyn Lifshin

always women in the
dark on porches talking
as if in blackness their
secrets would be safe.
Cigarettes glowed like
Indian paintbrush.
Water slapped the
deck. Night flowers
full of things with wings,
something you almost
feel like the fingers
of a boy moving, as if
by accident, under
sheer nylon and felt
in the dark movie house
as the chase gets louder,
there and not there,
something miscarried
that maybe never was.
The mothers whispered
about a knife, blood.
Then, they were laughing
the way you sail out of
a dark movie theater
into wild light as if no
thing that happened
happened

Stardust: A Lenten Reflection
by Thomas E. Schott

Those tiny dots of light
on our planetarium's
great dome
are our parents, they say.
We're all stardust--
which sounds romantic
to some:
as if the human tribe
were beings from heaven.
Or, conversely,
an integral component
(without wings and halos)
of the great
cosmic drama
that commences with a big bang
and terminates with a big,
sucking collapse.
It's beyond our imagining
in either case,
and far enough away
that we can continue
procreating,
confident that tomorrow
will actually arrive,
if only a little more crowded.

It would be perverse, I suppose,
to reckon stardust,
littering the floors of heaven,
akin to what we sweep up
here on earth and trash--
to point out that dust
causes sneezing,
carries diseases,
clogs important crevices,
fucks up the climate,
hosts microscopic mite enzymes
which make people deathly ill,
and annually
smudges our foreheads
with its ceaseless reminder
of what we are
and where we're going.

Gotta Get Myself a Gabriel
by John Grey

My grandmother gives me lessons
in trapping angels.
Not salt on the tail
like you'd snare a bird.

You do it late at night, she says,
when you're bedside,
on your knees and praying softly,
and the cherubim draw close to hear.

I don't tell her that my
last "God bless" was fifteen years ago.
My prayers, if any,
are selfish rants

inspired more by bad luck
than good will.
Almost had one when I was five,
she says.

Right there in my room it was,
an archangel I believe,
wide wings, shiny white epaulets
and a face glowing like a spotlight.

That lovely creature thought I wouldn't notice
but I had one ear cocked and one eye turning slowly.
Hands were ready to grab it by the robes.
What would my mother have said next morning.

Just what I need.
Waiting up nights for the chance
to grab at the hem of something
I don't believe in.

If faith's to have me
better find another way
than wrestling Uriel into submission
on the bedroom carpet.

But my grandmother's insistent.
Get yourself your very own angel
and you've a guardian for life.
For death too, she adds.

I think back to my childhood,
tadpoles in jars.
Can't say those squirmy creatures
thought I was doing them a favor.

Just what I need,
a pissed-off protector from the after-life
An angel on my shoulder indeed.
An angel on my case, more likely.

Thankfully, my father's ready
for today's hunting trip.
Might get us a buck today, he says,
if the angels are with us.

Wonder if my dad ever caught one.
Such a nervous trigger finger,
I just hope he hasn't blasted one
out of its seraphic splendor.

His gun did go off accidentally
in his room one time.
"Jesus!" he screamed.
Wow, I thought. Game don't come any bigger.